2)35? 

HZ 



HoUinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 




A Summary 
of 

European History 

from 
1815 to 1914 



Copyright, 1918 

By ROBERT J. MCLAUGHLIN 

Published December, 1918 



DEC -5 ISI8 



€:i.A5077;iO 



1^ 






V\ 



A SUMMARY OF EUROPEAN HISTORY 
FROM 1815 TO 1914 



(a) The Development of Germany. — At the time of 
Napoleon I., Germany consisted of more tlian three hundred 
separate states, which varied in size from the powerful 
kingdom of Prussia to the tiny domain of Count William 
of Buckeburg, whose fortress defended "a range of wooden 
huts, an observatory, and a potato field." The Congress of 
Vienna in 1814-1815, settled the affairs of Europe after 
Napoleon's fall, and by it a German Confederacy was 
formed of which Austria was chief. The number of states 
in Germany was then reduced to thirty-eight with a Diet 
at Frankfort, composed of delegates appointed by the vari- 
ous sovereigns. In 1818, Prussia replaced its sixty-seven 
different tariff systems by establishing free trade for all 
domestic commerce of Prussia, with a moderate tariff on 
foreign imports. Other states soon united with Prussia to 
form a Zollverein, or Customs Union, and by 1834 most 
of the German States had come in, though Austria was ex- 
cluded. This promoted the idea of German unity and de- 
veloped German commerce and industry. 

The Revolution of 1848 frightened Frederick William IV. 
of Prussia, and induced him to summon a national parlia- 
ment of about six hundred representatives to prepare a 
constitution for all Germany. After long debate, this body 
offered tlie crown to Frederick William in 1849, but he 
scornfully declined this "Crown of Mud and Wood," as he 
called it, having by this time put down the Revolution. 
The whole plan of a liberal constitution fell through and 
many patriots left Germany, in order to find freedom in 



America. In 1861, William I. became King of Prussia, ap- 
pointing Otto von Bismarck as his prime minister in 1862. 

Bismarck ruled without consulting the insignificant Land- 
tag, or parliament, of Prussia, saying, "The unity of Ger- 
many is not to be brought about by speeches nor by votes 
of majorities, but by iron and blood." In 1864, Bismarck 
in alliance with Austria fought a war with Denmark, in 
order to obtain the two duchies of Schleswig and Hoist ein. 
As Queen Victoria was pro-German, England did not inter- 
fere; and by this easy victory Schleswig-Holstein passed 
to German control; at Kiel, the seaport of Schleswig-Hol- 
stein, a German naval base was later established, which 
with the Kiel Canal to' the North Sea put the Baltic Sea 
under German domination. Bismarck now worked to begin 
a war with Austria; and in 1866, in alliance with Italy, he 
fought the Seven Weeks' War, in which Austria was utterly 
defeated at the decisive battle of Sadowa, or Koniggriitz, 
in Bohemia. As a result, Austria was excluded from Ger- 
many and Schleswig-Holstein became exclusively German 
territory. Bismarck next, in 1867, formed the North Ger- 
man Confederation, a union of twenty-two German States 
under the presidency of Prussia. 

The King of Prussia was of the Hohenzollcrn family, 
which had ruled over parts of Germany since 1415. When 
the throne of Spain became vacant, a Hohenzollern prince 
was elected in 1870. France thought that this would make 
Prussia too powerful, and at her protest the German prince 
withdrew. When the French ambassador demanded of the 
King, then at Ems, that he pledge himself never to permit 
such an .election. King William I. politely refused, and 
sent a telegram from Ems, telling Bismarck of the matter 
and leaving it to him to publish in the papers. Bismarck 
changed the wording of the Ems telegram so that it was 



very insulting to France, and war resulted in 1870. This 
Franco-Prussian war was a great defeat for France, who 
was compelled to give up to Germany Alsace and part of 
Lorraine (in eastern France), and to pay an indemnity of 
$1,000,000,000. In January, 1871, surrounded by the princes 
of German}^, in the palace of Versailles, near Paris, Wil- 
liam I. was proclaimed German Emperor. In 1882, Bis- 
marck further strengthened the Empire by the Triple Alli- 
ance, a defensive union of Germany, Austria, and Italy. 
In 1888, William I. died and was succeeded by his son, 
Frederick III.; this king, after a reign of ninety-six days, 
was succeeded by his son, William II., in 1888. This mon- 
arch wished to rule absolutely, and in 1890 he forced Bis- 
marck to retire. 

The Berlin-Bagdad railway was a plan of tlie Kaiser's 
to secure control of Asia Minor. He obtained permission 
from Turkey to construct it in 1902-1903, the plan being 
to unite Bagdad with Constantinople and thence with Ger- 
many. Had the plan been carried out fully, it would have 
threatened India and given Germany immense power in 
Asia Minor. Next he interfered with the French control of 
Morocco. After Russia, the ally of France, was defeated 
by Japan, the Kaiser forced France to dismiss Delcasse, 
lier able minister of foreign affairs, and to submit her claim 
to ^Morocco to a European Congress held at Algeciras, 
Spain, in 1906. This Congress, however, sustained the posi- 
tion^ of France there. 

The Agadir affair was another attempt to humiliate 
France. In 1911, Germany sent the cruiser "Panther" to 
the Moroccan port of Agadir ostensibly to protect German 
property, with the statement that the warship would go 
when the French left Fez. This looked like war, but Great 
Britain prevented it by warning Germany that in case of 



war, she would help France. In return for land giA'cn to 
Germany in French Congo, she recognized the French pro- 
tectorate over Morocco. The Middle-Europe project was 
a plan first proposed by Naumann, a German writer, in his 
book on "Mittel Europa." This was to be a union for the 
''purposes of offense and defense, military and economic" 
of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, the Balkan States 
and Greece. This union was to be under Gemian control, 
and the Kaiser by uniting it and the Bagdad-railway idea 
hoped to make German rule extend from central Europe 
into the "heart of Asia." With Germany's enormous mines 
of coal and iron, her vast army, and her powerful navy, 
the Kaiser felt that he could establish a world-empire so 
that his will should be consulted and obeyed in every land. 
The government of Germany under the Kaiser Avas little 
short of an autocracy. There was a form of representation 
of the people in the Reichstag, composed of three hundred 
and ninety -seven elected members, but the Kaiser's will 
dominated them. In January, 1914, Friedrich Naumann, 
a member of the'Reichstag, said: ''The man who compared 
this house to a hall of echoes was not far wrong. . . . 
When one asks the question, 'What part has the Reichstag 
in German history as a whole?' it will be seen that the 
part is a very limited one." The other legislative body, 
the Bundesrat, was a council of sixty-one members ap- 
pointed by the rulers of German states as their representa- 
tives. The Kaiser controlled foreign affairs, the army,- .and 
the navy ; he could declare war if in defense of the empire ; 
the chancellor, or prime minister, held office only at the 
pleasure of his master, the Kaiser. Hence the Kaiser 
merited his official title of "All-Highest." The bulwark 
of his support was Prussia, of which the Kaiser was heredi- 
tary king; and here, the Junkers, or country aristocracy, 



were the batsis of his power. The Junkers despised the mer- 
chant and professional chisses as much as they did the 
peasants on tlieir own estates, who were little better than 
serfs. Almost all state positions, civil and military, were 
filled from this powerful Junker nobility, who scorned all the 
effort of the democracy to secure greater political privi- 
leges. 

The growth of Germany from 1871 to 1914 was amazing. 
The population had increased from 41,000,000 to 66,000,000, 
and this despite the vast emigration to the United States 
and South America during these years. Manufactures in- 
creased greatly, owing to the ample supply of coal and iron 
in the countrv-. In 1885, about four million tons of pig 
iron were made in Germany ; in 1913, about fifteen million 
tons were manufactured. The number of tons of coal used 
by Germany rose from 73,000.000 in 1891 to 185,000,000 
tons in 1913, due to the increase in manufactures. Essen, 
with its great Krupp works manufactured guns, armor plate 
and other steel products; Elberfeld and Cologne had many 
cotton mills, and Krefeld had one hundred silk factories; 
Chemnitz and Berlin had vast manufacturing interests. The 
products of these mills with chemicals, dyes, drugs, etc., gave 
Germany a vast export trade before the war. Her exports 
were sent to every land; and her mighty commerce w^as 
generally carried in German ships, her merchant marine 
ranking next in size to that of England's. The cities in- 
creased in size, Berlin, for example, rising from 820,000 in 
1871, to more than 2,000.000 m 1910. Everywhere was 
wonderful prosperity, which excited the surprise of other 
nations. The Kaiser's mad dream of world empire was to 
ruin this splendid success. 

Note 1. — Otto von Bismarck, the creator of German unity, was born 
in 1815. After holding various diplomatic positions, he was appointed 
Prussian premier and minister of foreign affairs in 1862. He de- 



fended the royal prerogatives, and finally overcame the o^jposition of 
the Landtag. In 1867, he became chancellor of the North German 
Confederation; in 1871, he became the first chancellor of the German 
Empire, and was made a prince. He presided at the famous Berlin 
Congress of 1878, which settled the Balkan question for many years. 
When Emperor William II. succeeded to the throne in 1888, he re- 
sented Bismarck's control; and in 1890, seeing that he was not 
wanted, Bismarck resigned. Until his death in 1898, Bismarck re- 
mained in retirement. He was a brilliant but unscrupulous states- 
man, and despised the common people. Some of his cynical remarks 
became famous, as when he said, "The world cannot be ruled from 
below, " ' ' I deceive all diplomats by telling them the truth, " ' ' The 
Germans fear God, and we fear nothing else in the whole world." 

Note 2. — The Franco-Prussian War will be treated fully in the 
section on France. 

Note 3. — Emperor William I. died at the age of ninety-one in 1888. 
He was succeeded by his son, Frederick III., who had married Vic- 
toria, daughter of Queen Victoria of England ; Frederick died after 
a reign of ninety-six days, and was succeeded by William II. From 
1890 to 1914, William II. was practically an absolute monarch, his 
various chancellors being only figureheads. He had decided ability in 
many lines, but his arrogance and his ambition to become a world con- 
queror proved his ruin. His nature can be readily judged from some 
of his famous sayings. As early as 1890, he said, ' ' Every one who is 
against me, I shall crush. ' ' In the Golden Book of Munich, he wrote, 
''Suprema lex regis voluntas" ("The will of the king is the highest 
law"). During the Great War he said, "Considering myself as the 
instrument of the Lord, I go on my way . . . and so I am indif- 
ferent to the views and the opinions of the moment. ' ' For years he 
advocated the doctrine of the * ' divine right of kings ' ' to rule, after 
the rest of the world had abandoned the idea for more than a century. 
The atrocious cruelties of German warfare were due to him, and made 
him hated in every land. Hence the world greeted Avith joy the news 
of his abdication in November, 1918. 

Note 4. — Bismarck long opposed the acquisition of colonies by Ger- 
many. The desire for better markets for German products and the 
wish to increase German prestige, however, conquered this idea of 
Bismarck's. In 1879, a German company acquired privileges in the 
Samoan Islands, beginning Germany's colonial expansion. In 1884, 
Togoland, Kamerun, and German Southwest Africa were acquired; 
while her richest possession, German East Africa, came under the 
German flag in 1885. German territories Avere nearly all too hot or 
too dry for colonization, and their value lay in their rubber, ivory, 
and palm-oil, and in the possibility of great plantations to raise cof- 
fee, cocoa, and tobacco. The government of these colonies forced the 
idle negroes to work, caring little for their welfare, though schools 
were established for the negro children, German Southw^est Africa 
was largely a desert, but the discovery of diamonds there in 1908 made 



9 

it valuable ; the revolt of the Herero tribes lasted from 1903 to 
1907, and was put down with extreme ci-uelty, about 200,000 negroes 
being killed. Tn German East Africa, tlie natives, who resented being 
compelled to labor on the German plantations, rose in rebelHon, and 
more than 100,000 were killed before the revolt ended. Germany lost 
all her African colonies by British conquest during the Great War. 

(hi The Development of Austria. — The princes of tlio 
House of Hapsburg ruled Austria from the thirteenth cen- 
tury. From 1438 to 1806, Hapsburg emperors were the 
sovereigns of the Holy Roman Empire, as the loose con- 
federation of the German-speaking countries in central 
Europe was called. The Congress of Vienna in 1815, after 
the fall of Napoleon, made Austria the chief power in 
continental Europe, with Prince Clemens Metternich as her 
great minister of state. For many years, he aided the Aus- 
trian emperors in keeping in subjection the various races of 
Austria-Hungary. In this country in 1900, the Slavs num- 
bered about one-half of the population, and consisted of 
the Czechs of Boliemia and Moravia, the Slovaks of north- 
western Hungary, the Poles and Ruthenians of Galicia, etc.; 
the Germans comprised about one-fourth; the Magyars of 
Hungary, about one-sixth. In Metternich 's day, these many 
elements also existed, and the country was difficult to rule, 
since there was no feeling of national unity. 

The year 1848 saw a violent revolution in many parts 
of Europe, when the proclamation of the Second French 
Republic was made (February, 1848). Louis Kossuth, the 
Hungarian orator, led the insurrection in Hungary, while 
Bohemia also began a revolt. Metternich, then seventy 
years old, "still very courtly in his blue swallow-tail coat," 
after his palace in Vienna had been sacked and burned, 
escaped in disguise and fled for his life to London. Hun- 
gary, in 1849, proclaimed itself independent, with Kossuth 
as president. At this the young Austrian emperor, Francis 



10 

Joseph I., appealed for aid to Czar Nicholas I., the Russian 
autocrat. He did not wish to have a republic next to his 
lands; therefore he sent an army of more than 100,000 to 
aid Austria; and by this means, Hungary was conquered. 
The great Kossuth fled to Turkey ; then after a visit to the 
United States, he went to London, finally settling in the 
Italian city of Turin, where he died in 1894. Hungary suf- 
fered bitterly from the cruel Austrian commander. Baron 
Haynau, nicknamed "General Hyena" by the tortured peo- 
ple, and his measures ended the revolt. For ten years, the 
Austrian Emperor was an absolute monarch, though later, 
some degree of the constitutional government was granted. 
The German Zollverein, or Customs Union, had weakened 
the influence of Austria, but she was still the leading Con- 
tinental nation. Relations with Italy had been strained 
since Napoleon gave Venice and its territories to Austria 
in 1797; the treaty of Paris in 1814 provided that Lom- 
bardy and Venetia should go to Austria, and this possession 
was undisturbed till 1859, when war broke out between 
Austria and the kingdom of Sardinia, aided by Napoleon 
III. of France. The greatest battle of this war was fought 
at Solfcrino, in northern Italy, in 1859, where Austria was 
defeated. It was at this battle of Solferino that Napo- 
leon III. said, ''The poor people! The poor people! What 
a horrible thing is war!" while Francis Joseph, the Austrian 
emperor, said of it, "Better lose a province than be present 
again at so awful a spectacle." By this war of 1859, Aus- 
tria lost Lombardy in northern Italy. In the war of 1866, 
Prussia defeated Austria decisively at the battle of Konig- 
gratz, or Sadowa; as a result of this Seven Weeks' War, 
Austria was excluded from Germany, and was compelled to 
give Venetia (with Venice) back to the possession of Italy. 
The Triple Alliance of 1882 made Austria an ally of 



11 

Germany and Italy, though the possession by Austria since 
1797 of Dahnatia, along the eastern shore of the Adriatic, 
rankled in Italian minds. Austria likewise was a rival of 
Russia for the control of the Balkan nations. The prov- 
inces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in southeastern Austria, 
ha"d been placed under Austrian protection by the treaty 
of Berlin in 1878, but in defiance of this treaty she annexed 
these lands in 1908. Her jealousy of Serbia was great. The 
Austrian crown prince. Archduke Ferdinand, and his wife 
were assassinated in June, 1914, while on a visit to Sara- 
jevo, the capital of Bosnia. For this crime of two students, 
Austria held Serbia responsible, and Count Bcrchtold, the 
Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, sent an insulting 
ultimatum to Serbia. Austria refused to accept Serbia's 
reply to this ultimatum, and declared war on July 28, 1914, 
thus beginning the Great War. 

Note 1. — Francis ,Ioseph 1. was born in 1830, and succeeded to the 
thiioue in 1848, on tlie abdication of his uncJe during the revolutions 
of that year. He remained on the throne for almost sixty-seven years. 
His estrangement from his noble wife, the Empress Elizabeth, and the 
suicide, or nuirder, of his only sou Rudolph, in 1880, were two of the 
scandalous aft'airs of his court. Yet he was clever as a ruler, and 
managed to keep the Dual Monarchy together as long as he lived. 

Note 2. — Henri Dunant, a native of Geneva, as a young man took a 
pleasure trip in northern Italy in the summer of 1859, and found him- 
self near the scene of the gTeat battle of Solferino. For ten days he 
worked in the improvised field hospitals and enlisted the aid of peasant 
women and boys. Three years later, in 1862, appeared his little vol- 
ume called ''XTn Souvenir de Solferino," in which he suggested the 
formation in })eace times of societies of volunteers to he!]) the wounded 
in time of war. In 1863, Swiss delegates met at Geneva to discuss 
Dunant 's proposition. As a result of this, an international convention 
was held at Geneva in 1864, and the International Red Cross Society 
was formed. 

Note 3. — Austria-Hungary from 1867 to 1918 was a limited mon- 
archy, the monarch being emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. 
Each of these two countries had its own capital, its own constitution, 
and its own parliament. Foreign affairs, finance, and military and 
naval affairs were administered by the same ministers of state for the 
two countries. The crown was hereditary in the Hapsburg-Lorraine 
dynasty. 



12 

Note 4. — By the word Slav we mean a person belonging by birth 
to the Slavonian group of Aryans. They inhabit Russia, Austro-Hun- 
gary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. They number 
about 140,000,000, and are divided as follows: — 

1. The eastern Slavs, or Russians. 

2. The northAvestern Slavs, or Poles, Czechs, Moravians, and 
Slovaks. 

3. The southern Slavs, or Bulgarians, Slovenes, and Serbo-C'j'oa- 
tians. 

The Slovenes are found in Styria, Carniola, and (-arinthia; the 
Slovaks live chiefly in nortliern Hungary and Moravia; the Czechs 
form nearly 70% of the ])opulation of Bohemia and Moravia; the 
Serbo-Croatians are found in Bosnia, Croatia, and Slavonia; the Poles 
are found chiefly in western Galicia, while the Ruthenians are found in 
eastern Galicia and Bukowina. These various Slav peoples formed 
about half of the jiopulation of Austria-Hungary in 1910. 

The Germans of Austria-Hungary numbered about twelve millions 
in 1910, found chiefly in Austria, Styria, Carinthia, northern Tyrol, 
with smaller numbers in Bohemia, Moravia, and Galicia. 

The Magyars of Hungary nundiered ten millions in 1910. This 
race is of mixed Aryan and Mongolian blood. These people appeared 
in Europe for the first in 884, becoming Christians about a century 
later. They form the dominant race in Hungary. 

Italians in Austria-Hungary in 1910 numbered 768,000, and were 
found in Trieste, in the Trentino, and along the coast of Dalmatia. 

• 

((•) The Development of Italy. — Prince Metternich 
called Italy ^'a geographical expression," and in his day no 
such thing existed as a united Italy. From the Congress of 
Vienna in 1815 to 1859, with but little interruption, the 
chief poAvers in Italy were the kingdom of Sardinia, includ- 
ing Sardinia, Savoy, Genoa, and Piedmont, in northwestern 
Italy, with Turin as its capital; the grand duchy of Tus- 
cany in northwestern Italy; the duchy of Modena, in 
northern IImIv; the duchy of Parma, in northern Italy, 
ruled by Maria Louisa, the wife of Napoleon I.; the 
States of the Church, or the Papal States, in central Italy, 
with Rome as capital, and ruled by the Pope; the King- 
dom of the Two Sicilies, which included Sicily and lower 
Italy, with Naples as its capital; and the kingdom of 
Lombardo^ — Venetia in the north, belonging to Austria, 



13 

and ruled by an Austrian viceroy. Austrian influence 
was supreme in Italy, since the duchies were ruled by 
Austrian princes, while Ferdinand II. of the Two Sicilies 
was in alliance with Austria. In all of these states, the 
ruler was an absolute monarch, there being no parliament 
and no constitution in any of them. 

Napoleon in his brief occupation of Italy had introduced 
many reforms, but these were abolished by the Congress of 
Vienna; as a result, the people were dissatisfied, and many 
joined the Carbonari, a secret society wliich aimed in a 
vag-ue way to promote insurrection and revolt. This name 
was derived from the charcoal burners of Italy, wdiose trade 
the ritual of the society followed. The first revolution oc- 
curred in 1820, in Naples; here. King Ferdinand I., after 
yielding to the demands of the people and giving them a 
constitution and a parliament, appealed to Austria for help. 
All opposition ended soon after the Austrian army arrived, 
and the old absolute rule was restored. The French revo- 
lution of 1830 affected Italy, and the Carbonari plotted a 
new insurrection there. A revolt began in 1831 in Modena, 
Parma, and the Papal States, but it likewise was sup- 
pressed by an Austrian army. These two revolutions were 
local, but soon a new prophet of liberty arose who aimed 
to arouse all Italy. This was Ciuseppe (Joseph) Mazzini, 
who was born in Genoa, in 1805. Even in boyhood, he felt 
the misery of his country. In his autobiography, he said, 
'T childishly determined to dress always in black, fancying 
myself in mourning for my country." Seeing some refugees 
fleeing from Italy after the revolt of 1821, this boy- of six- 
teen felt that he must bear his part in the struggle for 
liberty, the thought of these refugees pursuing him day and 
night. He became a lawyer. Having joined the Carbonari, 
he was arrested in 1830, as a member of this society; after 



14 

six months, he was released, but forced to leave Italy, be- 
ginning that long exile of nearly forty years in France, 
Switzerland, and England. In 1831, Mazzini founded a 
new revolutionary society called "Young Italy, with the 
motto "God and the People." By 1833, the society, which 
aimed to drive Austria out of Italy, had 60,000 members. 
With Mazzini as leader, they failed, as, he was not success- 
ful as a man of action ; yet the patriotism that he inspired 
in them and others made him one of three great makers of 
modern Italy. 

A new revolution broke out when the news of the procla- 
mation of the Second French Republic (February, 1848) 
reached Italy. Venice declared itself a republic, and writ- 
ten constitutions were exacted in Tuscany, Sardinia, and 
the Papal States. In 1848, Charles Albert, the king of 
Sardinia, began a war with Austria to liberate Italy. "Pa- 
triots believed the resurrection of Italy — the Risorgimento — 
to be at hand," but it was not. The Austrians under Ra- 
detzky defeated the Sardinian army in two battles, all re- 
sistance ending at Novara, in 1849, when Charles Albert 
abdicated in favor of his son, Victor Emmanual II. In 
Sicily, the false, cruel Ferdinand II. put down the revolt 
by bombarding the cities, thereby gaining for himself the 
epithet of "Bomba." The revolt in Rome caused Pius IX. 
to flee to Naples for safety; a republic w^as established in 
Rome early in 1849, with Mazzini as chief of the trium- 
virate. France now decided to restore the Pope, and cap- 
tured the city in June, 1849, ending the Roman Republic, 
while Mazzini returned to poverty in London. 

The second maker of modern Italy was Count Camillo di 
Cavour. Born in 1810 of a noble family in Turin, he early 
adopted liberal views, which his sojourn in England con- 
firmed. Kins; Charles Albert had granted a constitution to 



15 

the kingdom of Sardinia, and Victor Emmanuel 11. on his 
succession to the tiirone refused all Austrian inducements 
to abolish this constitution, gaining the popular title of the 
''Honest King." Cavour became his prime minister in 1852. 
In 1855, Cavour induced Sardinia to join France and Great 
Britain in the Crimean War against Russia, by this means 
gaining the friendship of France for his country. In 1858, 
as a result, an alliance was made between Sardinia and 
France, by which the latter agreed to aid in driving Aus- 
tria from northern Italy. War began in 1859. After the 
victories of Magenta and Solferino, Austria was obliged 
to cede Lombardy to the kingdom of Sardinia. In a few 
months, the people of the duchies of Parma, Modena, and 
Tuscany insisted on annexation to the kingdom of Sardinia, 
and England supported their demand. France agreed to 
this by treaty in 1860, in exchange for the cession of Savoy 
and Nice. 

Early in 1860, Sicily rose in revolt, (liuseppe Garibaldi 
with his followers, "The Thousand," "the Red Shirts," left 
Genoa in two steamers in order to aid the Sicilians in their 
fight against the King of Naples. His victory in Sicily was 
complete. Next he crossed to tlie mainhmd, and overthrew 
the Neapolitan kingdom with little bloodshed. Victor Em- 
manuel's army then entered Naples, and by popular vote, 
the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was annexed to the king- 
dom of Sardinia. In 1861, a new parliament, representing 
all Italy except Vcnetia and Rome, met in Turin, and the 
kingdom of Sardinia became the kingdom of Italy, with 
Victor Emmanuel II. as its first monarch. Cavour before his 
death in the summer of 1861, made Parliament vote that 
Rome should be the capital of Italy. Italy's next gain was 
made in 1866, when in alliance with Prussia, she secured 
Venetia on the defeat of Austria in the Seven Weeks' War. 



16 

When the French troops were withdrawn from Rome after 
the battle of Sedan, in 1870, the troops of Victor Emmanuel 
II. entered Rome, which was made the capital of the king- 
dom of Italy. The Triple Alliance in 1882, of Germany, 
Austria, and Italy, was the next step in Italy's progress. In 
1911, Italy announced its intention to seize Tripoli and 
Cyrenaica; and as a result the Turco-Italian War was 
fought. The Turkish garrisons and the Arab tribesmen 
of the coast were conquered by Italy, and peace was signed 
in 1912, leaving Tripoli and Cyrenaica in Italian possession. 
When the Great War broke out, Italy declined to join 
Germany; in 1915, she declared w^ar against Austria as 
an ally of England and France, though war on Germany 
was not declared till 1916. 

Note 1. — Mazzini while in exile was sentenced to death for sharing 
in the revolt of 1857. This sentence was removed in 1866, though he 
declined to accept such an ''offer of oblivion and pardon for having 
loved Italy above all earthly things." He died in 1872. 

Note 2. — ' ' Cavour, ' ' said Lord Palmerston in the British House of 
Commons, 'Meft a name 'to point a moral and adorn a tale.' The 
moral was, that a man of transcendent talent, indomitable energy, in- 
extinguishable patriotism, could overcome difficulties which seemed 
insurmountable, and confer the greatest, the most inestimable benefit 
on his country. The tale with which his memory would be associated 
was the most extraordinary, the most romantic, in the annals of the 
world. ' ' 

Note 3. — Giuseppe Garibaldi was born at Nice in 1807, and was for 
many years a sailor. He took part in a revolt in Savoy in 1834, and 
was condemned to death. He managed to escape to South America, 
living there for fourteen years and joining in the South American 
wars with his famous "Italian Legion." Still under sentence of 
death, he returned to Italy to take part in the revolution of 1848. 
When Rome was reconquered by France, Austrian and French troops 
pursued him through forests and over mountains until he escaped to 
America. For several years, he commanded a Peruvian ship, and at 
another time he was a candle maker on Staten Island. He returned 
to Italy in 1854, living as a farmer on the little island of Caprera, 
near Sardinia, until war broke out in 1859. After his victory in 
Sicily and Naples, Garibaldi, seated by the side of King Victor Em- 
manuel II., drove in triumph through the streets of Naples in 1860. 
Garibaldi refused all rewards, and "with only a little money and a 
bag of seed beans for his farm, he sailed away to Caprera." He 



17 

commaiuled a French force in the Franco-Prussian War. Ho died at 
Caprera in 1882. 

(d) The Development of Belgium. — In 1794, Belgium, 
then called the Austrian Netherlands, was conquered by 
France and annexed. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 
united Belgium and Holland, forming the kingdom of the 
Netherlands, with the Dutch prince, William I., as ruler. 
The two countries, however, had little in common. They 
differed in religion, the Dutch being Protestants and the 
Belgians Catholics; they differed in language, the Dutch 
speaking Dutch, while the Belgians spoke either Flemish, 
which is a Teutonic language allied to Dutch, or Walloon, 
which is Belgian French; they also differed in occupation, 
the Dutch being mainly an agricultural and commercial 
people, while the Belgians were chiefly a manufacturing 
people. The obstinate William I. irritated the Belgians by 
imposing on them the Dutch law, the Dutch language, and 
Dutch officials, his powers being great under the constitu- 
tion. When the news of the French revolution of 1830 
reached Brussels, a revolt was organized, and Belgium pro- 
claimed its independence (October, 1830). The British 
government and the French government supported Belgium 
in this demand; and by agreement of an international con- 
vention, held in London in 1831, Belgium became an inde- 
pendent, constitutional monarchy, with Leopold of Saxe- 
Coburg as king. A British fleet and a French army had to 
be sent to Belgium before King William would evacuate 
it; and only in 1839 was its independence officially agreed 
to by him. Leopold L reigned over Belgium till 1865, and 
was then succeeded by Leopold IL 

Stanley's exploration of central Africa in 1871-1877 was 
described in his book, "Through the Dark Continent." Tn 
1878, a Belgian commercial company, realizing the wealth 



18 

of Afrka, began to develop the Congo valley. By a con- 
ference of the European Powers meeting in Berlin in 1884- 
1885, the Congo was made an independent, neutral state; 
and in 1885, Leopold II. became sovereign of this Congo 
Free State. The rubber, ivory, and palm-oil of the Congo 
were immensely valuable, and the natives there were forced 
to work as slaves by the Belgians. The cruelty shown to 
these Congo negroes led to international protests; and in 
1908, the Congo Free State became a Belgian colony, sub- 
ject to the Belgian parliament. In 1909, Leopold 11. died 
and was succeeded by his nephew, Albert I. Just after the 
Great War began, on August 2, 1914, Germany issued an 
ultimatum to Belgium, allowing her twelve hours to decide 
whether she would permit German troops to cross Belgium 
on the way to attack France. As a neutral country, she 
could not honorably permit Germany to do this; the Bel- 
gian government said in reply that her neutrality had been 
guaranteed by Germany and the other European Powers, 
and that she would resist any violation of it. Germany 
then insisted on sending her troops across Belgium, and this 
little country was thus drawn into the Great War in de- 
fence of its honor. 

Note. — On August 4, 1914, Sir Edward Grey, the British Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs, demanded of Germany that she respect Belgian 
neutrality and that she keep her armies out of that country. The 
German chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, said to the English ambassa- 
dor in Berlin that England ough^ not to enter the war just for the 
sake of ' ' a scrap of paper. ' ' This contemptuous reference to the 
solemn treaties by which Germany and the other European Powers 
had guaranteed Belgian neutrality shocked the world. 

(e) The Development of France. — The French Revo- 
lution began in May, 1789; the Bastille, or state prison of 
Paris, was seized by the mob on July 14, 1789, and this 
date became the national French anniversary, corresponding 
to the American Fourth of July. The first French Republic 



19 

was proclaimed in September, 1792; and the execution of 
the weak monarch, Louis XVL, followed in January, 1793. 
With the overthrow of Robespierre, in July, 1794, the bloody 
Reign of Terror ended in France. The government by the 
Directory of five men began in 1795, and ended with the 
coup d' Hat of 1799 (on the 18th Brumaire by the Revolu- 
tionary calendar, or November 9th by ours). 

By this sudden, violent overthrow of the existing govern- 
ment, Napoleon, the Corsican soldier, became first consul 
of France. In 1804, he was made hereditary emperor of 
the French. His wonderful military successes continued 
with the victory over the Russians and Austrians at Aus- 
terlitz (in northwestern Austria), in 1805, although the 
victory of Nelson at Trafalgar had just made England 
'•'mistress of the seas" again. In 1807, with Russia as an 
ally, he was at the height of his power, with his own rela- 
tives placed on the thrones of northern Italy, Naples, Hol- 
land, and Westphalia. The placing of his brother on the 
Spanish throne in 1808, led to a revolt there and in Por- 
tugal, where he was finally defeated by the English, under 
Viscount Wellington, later the Duke of Wellington. Napo- 
leon's first great defeat came in his war with Russia in 
1812, where he was forced by the approach of winter into a 
disastrous retreat. A coalition of Prussia, Russia, Austria, 
England, and Sweden defeated him at the battle of Leipsic 
in 1814, and soon forced him to abdicate. He received the 
island of Elba with the title of emperor, but finally escaped 
from there to France, in March, 1815, beginning the rule of 
the Hundred Days, which ended with his crushing defeat at 
Waterloo, Belgium, in 1815, by the English undei^ Welling- 
ton, aided by the Germans under Bliicher. 

The Congress of Vienna in 1815 restored to power in 
France Louis XVIII. of the Bourbon line of kings, and the 



20 

white flag of the Bourbons banished the tricolor of the 
revolution. In 1824, Louis XVIII. died and was succeeded 
by his brother, Charles X., who w^as then sixty-seven years 
old. He attempted to rule without consulting the national 
legislative bodies, saying, "I would rather saw wood than 
be a king of the English type," and issued several illegal 
ordinances in 1830, one of which suspended the freedom of 
the press. This caused the July Revolution of 1830, the 
''Glorious Three Days." The mob of Paris made barri- 
cades of the paving stones together with boxes, furniture, 
trees, etc.; and after defeating the soldiers of Charles, they 
expelled him from the throne and forced him to flee from 
France. The deputies and peers, at the desire of Lafayette, 
then elected to the vacant throne of France, Louis Philippe, 
Duke of Orleans, who became the "Citizen King." He 
secured the throne by the revolution of 1830, and he lost 
it by the revolution of 1848. Under Louis Philippe espe- 
cially, France passed from the old system of small home 
manufacturing to the factory system, and the use of steam- 
moved machinery. The toilers suffered from overwork and 
underpay; thus the silk weavers of Lyons, in 1831, earned 
eighteen sous for a day's work of eighteen hours. The king 
steadily opposed the reforms that the people demanded, and 
the Revolution of 1848 began. After three days of revolt, 
the Second Republic w^as proclaimed in February, 1848, 
while Louis Philippe drove off as "Mr. Smith," in a closed 
carriage, to end his days in England. 

After a provisional government had ruled for some 
months, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the ncpliew of Napo- 
leon I., was elected president in December, 1848. In 1851, 
by a coup d' etat, he was chosen president for ten years; 
in 1852, after a popular vote, he became emperor of France. 
Under him, France, allied with England, took part in the 



21 

Crimean War against Russia, in 1854- 1S56. Allied with 
Sardinia, Napoleon III. conquered Austria, at the battle of 
Solferino, in 1859. His fall came with the Franco-Prussian 
War. 

In 1868, a revolution had occurred in Spain ; and the pro- 
\'isional government repeatedly offered the Spanish throne 
to Prince Leopold, of tlie Hohenzollern family of Prussia. 
When the fourth offer was accepted by Leopold, in 1870, 
France was ah\rmed at this increase in Prussian power. 
The French ambassador was therefore directed to go to 
Ems, a German watering resort, where King William, the 
Prussian monarcli, then was in order to demand that Leo- 
pold withdraw. King William agreed, and the difficulty 
would liave ended if France had not insisted that no Hohen- 
zollern prince should ever accept the Spanish throne. King 
Wilham refused this request politely, and telegraphed the 
news to Bismarck in the Ems despatch, leaving him to pub- 
lish it in the newspapers. Bismarck did so in a manner 
purposely insulting to France; and to his delight, war was 
dechired by France in July, 1870. The German army under 
Count von Moltke was in splendid order; the French army 
was in supreme confusion. The French minister of war 
liad said that the French army was ready "to the last button 
on the last gaiter," but in reality bread, tents, medicines, 
munitions, and almost everything else were lacking. One 
general telegraphed to Paris: "What shall I do? I don't 
know where my regiments are!" This confusion proved 
fatal and France was utterly defeated. At the battle of 
Sedan in northeastern France, in September, 1870, Napo- 
leon IIL, after his defeat, was taken prisoner. When this 
news reached Paris, the Third Republic was proclaimed in 
September, 1870, under a provisional government. Aftei 
Marshal Bazaine with shameful cowardice surrendered 



22 

Metz and an army of 173,000 in October, 1870, the only 
resistance offered was by Paris. The Germans began the 
siege of Paris on September 19, 1870, continuing the siege 
for four months. The city endured the horrors of bom- 
bardment and famine. In January, the supply of coal and 
wood was almost exhausted; little bread could be had, and 
the people even ate dogs, cats, jind rats, the latter selling 
at two francs a piece. On January 28th, starvation com- 
pelled the city's surrender, and the (Jerman troops entered 
Paris in triumph. Bismarck imposed a drastic peace by 
the treaty of 1871, requiring France to cede Alsace, much 
of Lorraine, with the fortresses of Metz and Strassburg, and 
to pay an indemnity of a billion dollars. The provisional 
government of the Third Republic gave way to an elected 
National Assembly, which chose Louis Thiers as the first 
president. Civil war now broke out, when the revolutionary 
Commune, or local government of Paris, defied the National 
Assembly. The siege of Paris lasted two months in the 
spring of 1871, and caused widespread destruction of prop- 
erty, and the death of at least 20,000 Parisians. This war 
of the Commune ended May 28, 1871, with the defeat of 
the Communists by the general government of France. 

The Third Republic has continued as the government of 
France from 1870. It strengthened its position by an alli- 
ance with Russia in 1891, and by a later understanding 
with England. This Franco-British Entente was inaugu- 
rated in 1904; and by it, old discords over colonial claims 
were ended, and France and England agreed to act together 
in foreign matters. By England's agreement with Russia 
in 1907, a Triple Entente was formed between Russia, 
France, and Great Britain, which was invaluable to France, 
when Germany invaded her in 1914. 



23 

Note 1. — The colonial growth of France began in 1830, after the 
war with the dey of Algeria, By 1847, Algeria was entirely con- 
quered. In the reign of Napoleon III., the Senegal valley in Africa, 
and Cochin-China, Annani, and Cambodia, in southeastern Asia, were 
acquired. Tunis was occupied by French trooj)S in 1881; later, Mad- 
agascar, French Congo, Dahomey, Ivory Coast, French Guinea, tlie 
Niger valley, and the Sahara were a<hled to the French colonial i)os- 
sessions. In 1912, the sultan of Morocco submitted to a Freiu-li 
protectorate. (See the account of the Algeciras Convention and of 
Agadir in the summary of German development.) 

Note 2. — The Constitution of France vests legislative power in a 
Cham))er of Deputies and a Senate; the Chamber of Deputies is 
elected by the people, while the Senate is elected by electoral bodies. 
The president of the French Republic is elected for a term of seven 
years by the Senate and the Chandler of Deputies in joint session. 
The president today is Raymond Poncaire, elected in 1913. The 
premier of France is the fiery Georges Clemenceau, elected in 1917 
at the age of seventy-six. 

• Note 3. — Early in July, 1815, Napoleon had gone to Rochefort on 
the French coast, with the vague idea of escaping to America; but 
on July 15th, he delivered himself to Captain Maitland, of the British 
battleship * ' Bellerophon.'^ By agreement of the allies, General 
Bonaparte, as the English always called him, was not allowed to lan<l 
in England, but was taken on the English ship, the ' ' Northund)er- 
land, " to the lonely island of St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, where 
he lived till 1821, spending his time in walking about the island, iu 
quarreling with his English jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe, or in dictating 
his memoirs. In his will, he asked to be buried on the banks of the 
Seine * ' in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so well ; ' ' 
and in 1840, his remains were removed to the magnificent tomb in the 
Hotel des Invalitles, Paris. 

Note 4. — Napoleon I. divorced his first wife, the Empress Josephine, 
in 1809, and married an Austrian princess, Maria Louisa, in 1830. 
Their son received from his father the title of the king of Rome. At 
the fall of Napoleon, his young son was taken to the Austrian court, 
and brought up amid spies and enemies as the Duke of Reichstadt. 
He died at Schonbrunn, near Vienna, in 1832. 

Note 5. — Louis Napoleon Bonaj)arte, who became Napoleon III., 
was the nephew of the great Napoleon I. He passed his youth in 
exile from France. He joined the Carbonari in Italy, and was seized 
by the Austrians for his share in a revolt in 1831; his release was 
secured '"only through his mother's tears." In 1836, after trying 
to begin a revolution at Strassburg, he was arrested, but released on 
condition that he would go to America. In 1840, after he had made 
another attempt at revolution at Boulogne, he was confined in the 
fortress of Ham for six years, escaping in the disguise of a mason 
bearing a plank. After his rule as emperor, he was taken prisoner 
by the Germans at Sedan, in Septendjer, 1870; after a short impris- 



24 

ment in Germany, he went to England, living at his estate of Chisel- 
hurst, near London, till his death in 1873. Eugenie, his wife, es- 
caped from Paris in 1870, and is still living (1918) in England. 

(f) The Development of Turkey and the Balkan 
States. — In 1815, the Ottoman Empire was very extensive, 
including what is now Greece, modern Turkey, Bulgaria, 
Serbia, Bosnia, and Wallachia in Europe, with Egypt, Tri- 
poli, Tunis, and Algeria in Africa, and Asia Minor, Syria, 
Mesopotamia, etc., in Asia. It was ruled by the sultan, 
called by his subjects the padishah, ^'King of Kings," and 
"Shadow of God." His prime minister was called the grand 
vizier; and his army up to 1826 was composed of profes- 
sional soldiers, called Janissaries. Official corruption and 
misgovernment prevailed in all parts of Turkey. The offi- 
cials, from the ruling pashas to the tax-collectors, all bought 
their positions, and then enriched themselves by oppressing 
the helpless people; unruly bands of brigands and irregular 
soldiers terrorized the country, while massacres of the 
Christian population by the bigoted Mohammedan Turks 
were very frequent. In the Balkan peninsula in south- 
eastern Europe, the Christians greatly outnumbered the 
Mohamrpedans, as Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Bosnia, and 
Rumania were mainly of the Greek Orthodox Church; these 
separate nationalities, however, though of the same religion, 
never could unite against their Turkish master, but con- 
stantly fought each other. Greece revolted from Turkey, 
fighting for its independence from 1821 to 1829. England 
France, and Russia were greatly in favor of the freedom of 
Greece; thus, Victor Hugo, the French writer, praised the 
Greek rebels in his poems, while the English poet, Lord 
Byron, gave his fortune and his life to help them win in- 
dependence. In 1827, an allied fleet sent by England, France, 
and Russia defeated the Turkish fleet in the harbor of Na- 



25 

varino, in Greece. Turkey finally yielded, and Greece, 
after a brief period as a republic, became a monarchy in 
1832, with Athens as its capital. 

Czar Alexander II. desired to regain the intluence in the 
Balkans that Russia had lost after its defeat in the Crimean 
War (1853-56). In 1876, the Christians of Bulgaria rose 
against their Turkish rulers, who in revenge butchered thou- 
sands of Bulgarians. These Bulgarian atrocities aroused 
Europe. Russia, in alliance with Serbia, Montenegro, tuid 
Rumania, declared war against Turkey in 1877. In this 
war, the siege of Plevna was famous, the Turkish com- 
mander, Osman Pasha, holding out for five months against 
a force three times as great as his own. The fall of Plevna 
ended Turkish resistance, and in 1878, a treaty of peace 
was signed between Russia and Turkey. England insisted 
that the entire matter be referred to the European powers; 
and accordingly, the Balkan question was taken before 
delegates of these powers, meeting in Berlin, 1878, as the 
Congress of Berlin, with Bismarck as president. By the 
treaty of Berlin drawn there, Montenegro, Serbia, and Ru- 
mania became entirely independent of Turkey; and Bosnia 
and Herzegovina were placed under the control of Austria, 
while remaining part of Turkey. Bulgaria suffered most 
by the treaty of Berlin. As Austria feared to have as 
neighbor a powerful Bulgarian state friendly to Russia, she 
forced the Congress of Berlin to divide Bulgaria into three 
parts. The upper part alone was to have its own prince 
while paying tribute to Turkey; the middle section, or 
Eastern Rumelia, was to have a Christian governor ap- 
pointed by Turkey; the third section, Macedonia, was put 
entirely under Turkish rule. The treaty of Berlin was in 
part set aside in 1885, when Eastern Rumelia united with 
Bulgaria to form the principality of Bulgaria; this prin- 



26 

cipality became the kingdom of Bulgaria in 1908, with Sofia 
as capital. 

Note. — The stronghold of Plevna is in Bulgaria, just south of the 
Danube. To avoid starvation, Osnian Pasha, the brave Turkish eoni- 
niander, surrendered with 40, ()()() men, on December 10, 1S77. 

The Treaty of Berlin left Turkey in Europe only about 
65,000 square miles, made up chiefly of Macedonia, Epirus. 
Eastern Rumelia, and Albania, though it still owned vast 
tracts in Asia and Africa. In Asiatic Turkey, Anatolia in 
western Asia Minor was inhabited by Turks, while to the 
east of this lay Christian Armenia, and the lands of the 
Mohammedan Kurds, mainly savage mountaineers in the 
Caucasus Mountains. Abdul Hamid II. became sultan in 
1876, after two palace revolutions. He had lost his best 
provinces by the Russo-Turkish War and the Treaty of 
Berlin (1878), but he knew that the jealousy of European 
powers would prevent further losses. From 1880, he ruled 
Turkey as a tyrant, spending enormous sums on his pleas- 
ures while denying all progress and improvement to his 
people. The Armenians, located chiefly in eastern Asia 
Minor, were the bankers and merchants of Turkey. In 
1894-1895, in order to repress their growing desire for in- 
dependence, he let loose on them the fanatical Kurds, the 
massacres beginning in the summer of 1894; and from 100,- 
000 to 200,000 Armenians were slain. The indignant 
Gladstone called Abdul Hamid "the Great Assassin," and 
French papers called him "the Red vSultan;" but the Ger- 
man ruler, William II., ignored these tragedies and culti- 
vated Turkish friendship in order to acquire influence in 
Asia Minor. In 1898, the Kaiser visited Palestine in state, 
assuring the sultan in one of his speeches there that he 
and the millions of Mohammedans in the world might feel 
sure that the German emperor was their friend. In 1902, 



27 

as a result of this visit and this friendship, the Sultan 
granted Germany permission to begin a railroad in Asia 
Minor, the famous Berlin-Bagdad road. "The Young 
Turks" managed to force the infamous Abdul Hamid to 
grant a constitution and a parliament in 1908, but he soon 
rejected these concessions. Finally, in 1909, the revolted 
army entered Constantinople, reconvened the parliament, 
and deposed Abdul Hamid, electing his brother Mohammed 
v., bringing out of his luxurious pahice prison a ruler who 
said he had not read a newspaper for twenty years. In the 
reign of this monarch, the last of Turkey's African pos- 
sessions went in the Turco-Italian War of 1911-1912, when 
Italy seized Tripoli. 

In 1912 and 1913, two bloody Balkan wars were fought. 
In 1912, during the Turco-Italian War, an alliance of Serbia, 
Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro was formed. After the 
conclusion of the Turco-Italian War, Montenegro, mflamed 
by a Macedonian massacre, declared war on Turkey in the 
autumn of 1912, and was soon joined by her allies. The 
decisive conflict of this war was the battle of Lule Burgas, 
where the Bui gars routed the Turks. Turkey secured an 
armistice ; but as the Young Turks opposed the peace terms, 
the war was renewed in February, 1913, and lasted till 
May, 1913, when peace was made. By the treaty, Turkey 
gave up all territory west of a line drawn from Enos on 
the yEgean Sea to Midia on the Black Sea, and ceded the 
island of Crete to Greece, the Turks being thus almost 
driven out of Europe. The quarrels of the Balkan States 
regarding the division of the conquered territory led to a 
new war, when Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, Rumania, and 
Turkey began war on Bulgaria, in the summer of 1913. 
This short "July War" was very disastrous for Bulgaria. 
The Balkan States made peace by the treaty signed at 



28 

Bucharest, the capital of Rumania, in August, 1913, by 
which the conquests of the preceding war were redivided. 
By a later treaty with Turkey, the city of Adrianople was 
restored to Turkey by Bulgaria. These two Balkan wars 
took from Turkey four-fifths of her European territory, 
leaving her only 11,000 square miles in Europe. As a result, 
in 1913, tlie population of Rumania became 7,500,000, wliile 
Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia had each about 4,500,000, and 
Turkey in Europe had only about 2,000,000 inhabitants. The 
only two large cities left in European Turkey were Adri- 
anople and Constantinople, though she still retained in 
Asia, Asia Minor, Armenia, Kurdistan, Syria, Mesopotamia, 
and Arabia, with a population of about 21,000,000. 

The chief rivals for Balkan influence after these Balkan 
Wars were Austria and Russia. Austria supported by Ger- 
many, desired to increase her empire by taking land from 
Greece and Serbia so that it should extend to Saloniki on 
the Jilgean Sea. Russia aimed at making a union or con- 
federation of all Slav nations, to include Serbia, Monte- 
iiegro, and Bulgaria. Hence the Great War of 1914 resulted 
in part from these European rivalries over the Balkans. 

Note 1. — Serbia was ruled l)y its own kings from the eleventh cen- 
tury till their defeat by the Turks at the battle of Kossovo in IHSt). 
In this battle both the Serbian King Lazarus and the Turkish Sultan 
Amurath were killed. According- to the legend, the Serbian king 
dreamed on the eve of the battle that he had the choice between great 
earthly possessions if he would let the Turks march into Europe 
through his lands, and a heavenly crown, if he resisted them. He 
chose to fight them, and since that time, the Serbs have kept the day 
every year as a day of mourning. 

Note 2. — The first king, or tsar, of Bulgaria was Alexander of Bat- 
teuberg,. elected in 1879; he was a German prince, unable to speak 
the Bulgar language. He disagreed with the Sobranje, or Bulgarian 
parliament, but remained on the throne till 1886, when he was seized 
by mutineers and taken into Russia. The czar refused to approve 
his return into Bulgaria, and Alexander gave up the crown. For the 
next eight years, the premier, Stand)ulov, the son of a poor inn-keepei', 
was the real ruler of Bulgaria. The election of the second monarch, 



29 

Priiu'o FtM-dinancl of Saxe-Coburg, another Gorman prince, did not 
affect Stamltulov 's wise rule for several years. The i)ren»Ler sup- 
pressed Bulgarian liberties in order to promote Bulgarian wealth, and 
under him ])oi)ular education advanced, a modern army was created, 
and Sofia rose from a dirty Turkish village to a beautiful European 
city. In 1894, the crafty Ferdinand forced Staml)ulov to resign, and 
the next year the fallen statesman was brutally murdered on the 
streets of Sofia by three of his political enemies. Ferdinand became 
tsar of Bulgaria in 1908. He entered the Great War as an ally of 
Germany in 1914, and Avas forced to abdicate in 1918, after Bulgaria's 
defeat. 

Note 3, — In 1889, King Milan of Serbia abdicated, and went to 
live in Paris. His son Alexander ascended the throne at the age of 
thirteen, with three regents in control. In 1893, Alexander invited the 
regents to dinner and there arrested them, assuming the rule of Ser- 
bia. In 1900, King Alexander married Madame Draga Mashin, the 
widow of a Bohemian engineer. Queen Draga and King Alexander 
were very unpopular in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. In June, 1903, 
a band of otiicers led by Colonel Mashin, the queen 's Iji'other-in-law, 
murdered the king and the queen in the i)alace, and this caused great 
rejoicing in Belgrade. The exiled Prince Peter Karageorgevich was 
then recalled, and ruled as King Peter. 

(g) The Development of Russia. — Russia by the deci- 
sion of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, retained Finland, 
conquered from Sweden in 1809, and Bessarabia in south- 
western Russia, won from the Turks in 1812. She also 
gained most of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which had 
been formed out of Polish territories, seized by Austria and 
Prussia in the eighteenth century. 

Czar Alexander I. had fought Napoleon at Austerlitz in 
1805, and in the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812. 
He had aided in his overthrow, at Leipsic in 1813. After 
Napoleon's fall, Alexander was probably the most powerful 
sovereign in Europe. In youth he had shown liberal ideas 
of government, but he soon became conservative and op- 
posed any popular liberty. He did, however, promote the 
introduction of Western civilization into Russia. At his 
death in 1825, he was succeeded by his brother, Nicholas I. 
He ruled as an absolute monarch, giving his secret police, 



30 

called the Third Section, almost unlimited power to im- 
prison, exile, or execute all suspected persons. Any trifling 
word might mean exile to Siberia, without a trial. In the 
twenty years from 1832 to 1852, fully 150,000 persons were 
exiled to Siberia; after the horrors of the long journey, 
most of these were condemned to slave in the mines there. 
No freedom of the press was permitted, and liberal foreign 
literature was excluded. He regarded all higher schools 
and colleges as ''hotbeds of revolution;" hence in 1853, 
Russia with a population of 70,000,000, had only about 
3,000 students attending such institutions. He incorporated 
the short-lived kingdom of Poland in Russia. At the request 
of the Austrian monarch, Francis Joseph, he sent an army 
which suppressed the revolt in Hungary. The Crimean 
War proved his downfall. It began in 1853, with a war 
between Russia and Turkey; in 1854, France and Great 
Britain entered the war against Russia, fearing any increase 
in her power in the East, while Sardinia came to the allies' 
help in 1855. Most of the struggle was confined to the 
peninsula of Crimea, in southern Russia. The chief event 
was the siege of Sevastopol, or Sebastopol, on the Black 
Sea. This siege began in October, 1854, and lasted eleven 
months. The city was defended by Todleben, the greatest 
figure of the war. The number of killed was more than a 
thousand a day; the city yielded in September, 1855, after 
its defence had cost Russia 250,000 lives. Nicholas I. died 
during the war in March, 1855, and his son and successor, 
Alexander 11. , signed the peace treaty in March 1856. By 
this treaty, Russia regained Sevastopol, and gave up part 
of Bessarabia with the mouth of the Danube. 

The new czar was at first very liberal, relaxing the re- 
strictions on the press and the universities. His great work 
was the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. These serfs. 



31 

numbering about fifty millions, cultivated the lands of the 
great estates. They were not exactly slaves. Each estate 
was divided into two parts, one part being kept for the 
owner's use, and the other being cultivated for the serfs' 
support. They were obliged to work three days a week 
for the owner of the estate; and when the estate was sold 
the serfs wx*nt to the new owner. A nobleman's wealth was 
not reckoned as the possession of so many acres, but as the 
owning of so many hundreds of "souls." The Edict of 
Emancipation was issued in 1861, and it abolished serfdom 
throughout the Russian Empire. The liberated serfs were 
given a certain amount of community land for their sup- 
port, the lands surrounding each village being village prop- 
erty. In this reign, in 1867, Russia sold Alaska, or Russian 
America, to the United States for $7,200,000. The war with 
Turkey lasted from 1877 to 1878, with General Skobelef! as 
the chief Russian leader; after the capture of Plevna and 
the temporary treaty, the final peace terms were settled by 
the Congress of Berlin, in 1878. 

The rise of the Nihilists dates from the latter part of the 
reign of Alexander II., when he became more absolute in 
his rule. The Nihilists condemned all Russian institutions, 
and were unwilling to submit to any authority or social 
obligation. As a result of their criticisms of the govern- 
ment, they were forced to live abroad. The Nihilists and 
other revolutionaries became bitter at the government's op- 
pression; and a small number of them organized at Petro- 
grad, in 1878, as Terrorists, planning and executing attacks 
on officials by the use of explosive bombs. In 1881, on the 
very day that Alexander II. signed a decree authorizing 
reforms in the government, he was killed by the explosion 
of bombs hurled by the Terrorists. 

Alexander III. reigned from 1881 to 1894, and opposed all 



32 

reforms. He hunted down the Terrorists, and abolished all 
freedom of the press and the universities. Persecution of 
the Jews was a feature of this reign. In the Russian Em- 
pire lived about five million Jews, settled chiefly in Poland 
and Lithuania, and at Kiev and Kishinev. These people 
preserved their own religion and spoke the Yiddish language, 
an intermixture of German and Hebrew, and written with 
Hebrew characters. In 1890, Alexander III. ordered all 
Jews in interior Russia to emigrate to the western provinces, 
and live in the Jewish Pale. They were forbidden to own 
land; they were forced to live in cities, and were prohibited 
from studying for most of the professions. Pogroms, or 
anti-Jewish outbreaks, with plundering and sometimes mas- 
sacre became common. As a result, 300,000 Jews left Rus- 
sia in 1891, many coming to the United States. 

Alexander HI. died in 1894, and was succeeded by his 
son, Nicholas II., destined to be the last of the Romanoffs. 
The industrial progress of his father's reign continued in this 
reign. Many factories were built, coal and iron mines were 
opened, and many miles of railway constructed. The 
Siberian Railway, begun in 1891, was practically completed 
in 1899, and aided in Russian development. 

The Russo-Japanese War lasted from 1904 to 1905. It 
was caused by the Russian occupation of Manchuria, in 
northern China, this possession arousing the fears of Japan. 
The strongly fortified Port Arthur, in eastern Manchuria, 
was besieged by the Japanese under General Nogi from 
July, 1904, till the following January, when it surrendered. 
At Mukden, the capital of Manchuria, from February 23, 
1905, to March 10, 1905, the greatest battle of the war was 
fought; the Japanese under Marshal Oyama defeated the 
Russian commander-in-chief, Kuropatkin, here, and forced 
him to retreat after a loss of nearlv 100,000 men. The 



famous naval battle in the Sea of Japan, in May, 1905, 
resulted in the annihilation b}^ Admiral Togo of the Russian 
fleet which had been sent all the way from the Baltic Sea 
to Japan, in an effort to stem the tide of Russian disasters. 
The treaty of peace, signed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 
in September, 1905, gave Japan the southern half of the 
island of Sakhalin, and freed Korea and Manchuria from 
Russian control, while it made Japan a world power. 

A revolutionary movement began in Petrograd in 1905. 
A procession of striking laborers, led by a priest named 
Gapon, while on the way to present a petition to the czar, 
was fired on by troops, the day of this bloodshed being 
called "Red Sunday." To check the growing discontent, 
the czar granted reforms and provided for an assembly, or 
Duma, to meet in the capital, and counsel him in making 
laws. It met in 1906, but did little, and was followed by 
the ineffective second Duma in 1907. The third Duma and 
the fourth Duma were at least advisers of the czar, though 
the government remained as autocracy. Russia entered the 
Great War in alliance with France and England in 1914. 
In 1916, the Duma passed a resolution declaring that "dark 
forces" were betraying Russia's interest, referring to the 
pro-German czarina and to the influence exercised over her 
by the monk Rasputin, who was murdered later in the year. 
The czar's abdication in 1917 ended the autocracy of the 
Romanoffs. 

Note 1.— In the naval l)attle of Tsiisliiina, in the Japan Sea, on 
May 27, 1905, when the Russian Baltic fleet was destroyed by Admiral 
Togo, the Japanese flagship "Mikasa" signalled: *'The rise or fall 
of our empire depends upon to-day's battle. Let every man do his 
utmost. ' ' 

Note 2. — The revolution of March, 1917, which overthrew the throne 
of the weak Nicholas II., was due to the pro-German policy of certain 
members of the Russian court. The fallen emperor, deserted by his 
troops, abdicated, and was sent with his family to Siberia, living there 
in a private house, under guard. Later, fearing a plot to release him. 



34 

the Bolsheviki government sent liim to a town in the Urals. On July 
16, 1918, without a trial, by order of the Ural council of the Bolshe- 
viki, Nicholas II. Avas executed by a firing squad. It is said that just 
before the shots were fired, he called out : ' * Spare my wife and my 
innocent children. May my blood preserve Eussia from ruin." 

Note 3. — Shortly after the abdication of the czar in March, 1017, 
a republican government was formed with Alexander Kerensky as 
premier. All discipline in the army was ended by the creation of 
soldiers' councils at the front, and many officers were murdered. 
Kerensky was overthrown in November, 1917, by the Bolsheviki, or ex- 
treme socialists. Tlie leaders of the Bolsheviki were Nicolai Lenine 
and Leon Trotzky, the latter being the pen name of the Russian revo- 
tionist, Leon Bronstein. These two men were in the pay of Germany 
and were under German control, according to documents issued by the 
Committee on Public Information of the United States Government. 
Lenine, as Russian premier, and Trotzky as Russian Minister of For- 
eign Affairs, negotiated an armistice with Germany in December, 
1917. This was followed by the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, made in 
March, 1918, and ratified by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets at 
Moscow. By this infamous treaty, Russia lost the western third of 
European Russia, including Courland, Poland, Lithuania, Livonia and 
Esthonia, while the independence of "Finland anil Ukrainia were rec- 
ognized. This treaty robbed Russia of one-fourth of her population. 

(li) The Development- of the British Empire. — King 
George III. became hopelessly insane in 1811; and his son, 
a. dissolute dandy who considered himself "the first gentle- 
man in Europe" became regent until his father's death in 
1820, when he ascended the throne as George IV. England 
had been Napoleon's chief foe, because of her navy, her 
wealth, and her unconquerable determination ; and William 
Pitt, her great prime minister till his death in 1806, arranged 
the coalition that hnally ended Napoleon's sway in 1815. 
The Congress of Vienna confirmed the English possession of 
Malta, Ceylon, Cape Colony (now the Province of the Cape 
of Good Hope), Trinidad, and the island of Heligoland, in 
the North Sea. George Canning, the British Secretary for 
Foreign Affairs from 1822 to 1827, opposed the alliance of 
Continental powers that aimed at suppressing democracy 
by armed interference in other countries. England refused 
to sanction the European intervention desired by Ferdi- 



35 

nand VII. of Spain to restore his revolted colonics in South 
America. President James Monroe "acting with the fore- 
knowledge and friendly assurances of the British govern- 
ment," sent to the American Congress on December 2, 1823, 
his message containing what has since been known as the 
Monroe Doctrine; this announced that any European at- 
tempt to control independent countries in the Western 
Hemisphere would be regarded as an ''unfriendly disposition 
toward the United States." As Canning said, he had ''called 
the New World into existence to redress the balance of the 
Old." 

The French Revolution that began in 1789 exerted much 
influence on England. The costume changes in France ex- 
tended to England, knee breeches and the cocked hat giving 
way gradually to pantaloons and the modern hat. This 
French Revolution helped to change the criminal code of 
England. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in 
England, there were nearly two hundred offenses punish- 
able by death; capital punishment was the law even for 
the offense of a pick-pocket theft to the value of twelve 
pence. Many of these severe penalties were changed to 
lighter, more merciful punishments when the criminal code 
was reformed in 1823 by the efforts of Sir Robert Peel. 
Before he left office. Peel reduced the number of capital 
capital crimes to about a dozen. 

The industrial revolution in England made even greater 
changes; this revolution meant the change from hand labor 
to machine work, and from home manufactures to the fac- 
tory system where the capitalist employed great numbers 
of workmen. It began with the invention of machinery to 
be used in making cotton cloth. James Hargreaves in 1770 
patented a spinning jenny so that one person could spin a 
number of threads at the same time. In 1769, Richard 



36 

Arkwright invented a water-power machine for spinning- 
thread from cotton. In 1779, Samuel Crompton combined 
features of these two inventions, making the spinning mule, 
which made excellent thread. Edmund Cartwright's 
power-loom, run by water power, was invented in 1785, and 
this soon did away with the hand-loom in weaving. James 
Watt's steam engine was patented in 1769, and the first 
steam spinning-mill was established in England in 1785. 
With these manufacturing inventions, domestic commerce 
was revolutionized by the steam locomotive, invented by 
George Stephenson; his first engine in 1825 went twelve 
miles an hour, and railroads soon displaced stage-coaches. 
The American "Clermont" in 1807, equipped with one of 
Watt's engines, banished the sailing vessel from inland 
waters, while the "Great Western" in 1838, by its journey 
across the Atlantic from Bristol to New York in fifteen 
days cut in half the time needed by sailing packets for this 
journey. This industrial revolution, however, had its draw- 
backs. Many men were thrown out of work, and many 
women and children were forced into overwork. In Eng- 
land, pauper children, sometimes as young as five or six 
years of age, were hired out by parishes to work in the 
factories from "five or six in tlie morning till nine or ten 
at night." It is little wonder that much unrest and dis- 
content were caused. 

' Note 1. — George IV. as regent and as king was very lazy, thougli 
quite clever. To the end of his days, he remained "a dissolute and 
drunken fop, a spendthrift, and a gamester" whose word could never 
be trusted. "More wicked kings have reigned over England, but none 
who was more contemptible." His wife was the frivolous, indiscreet 
Queen Caroline. He had always disliked her, and they separated in 
1796. The queen travelled abroad from I8I0 to 1820, returning to 
England after George IV. ascended the throne. The king proceeded 
to apply in the House of Lords for a divorce in 1820, but the matter 
was soon dropped because of popular disapproval. The queen died 
the next year. 



37 

Note 2. — George Canning succeeded Castlereagh (Marquis of Lon- 
donderry) as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, when the latter 
committed suicide in 1822. Canning Avas an eloquent orator and a 
brilliant man. It is said that he could dictate two papers at the 
same time on such different (juestions as affairs in Greece and in South 
America. Canning at first opposed fighting Turkey in the Greek war 
for iudei)endence, through Lord Byron and nuuiy other Englishmen 
enthusiastically enlisted in the Grecian cause. Finally an English 
fleet was sent which aided in winning the decisive battle of Navarino 
in 1827. Canning died soon after he became premier in 1827. 

Note 3. — William Wordsworth (1770-1850) published his poem, 
''The Excursion," in 1814. ''The Ancient Mariner," by Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) ai)peared in 1798. The great novelist, 
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) published ''The Heart of Midlothian" 
in 1818 and " Ivanhoe " in 1820. Lord Byron (1788-1824) issued his 
famous poem, "Childc Harold," in sections from 1812 to 1818. Other 
contem])oraries of these men were the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley 
(1792-1822), the essayist, Charles Lamb (1775-1834), and the artist- 
Joseph Turner (1775-1851), whose famous painting, "The Fighting 
Tenieraire," appeared in 1839. 

In 1830, William IV. succeeded his brother, George IV. 
His education was defective, but he was honest and kind- 
hearted; his eccentricities, however, gave him the nick- 
name of ''Silly Billy." In this reign, various electoral 
reforms were made. Prior to 1832, in the House of Com-, 
mons, representation was most unequal, and not more than 
one-third of the members were chosen independently by 
the people. Great cities like Manchester, Birmingham, 
Sheffield, and Leeds had no representation in Parliament; 
representatives, however, were sent from Old Sarum, which 
was a green mound with one or two houses near; from 
Dunwick, almost covered by the North Sea; and from 
Malmesbury, where none of the thirteen voters could wTite. 
The Reform Bill of 1832 redistributed the seats in Parlia- 
ment and abolished old absurdities; it also increased the 
number of voters in England, though city workmen and 
country laborers were still denied the vote. In 1867 and 
in 1884, further reforms were made; in 1917, Parliament 



38 

amended the law, and gave to men over twenty-one and to 
women over thirty, the right to vote. 

Slavery w^as abolished in the English colonies in this 
reign. The slave trade had been abolished by England in 
1807; slavery in the English colonies was abolished in 1833 
by a plan of gradual emancipation, just one month before 
the death of William Wilberforce, the English pioneer in 
the anti-slavery movement. 

William IV. died in 1837, and was succeeded by his niece 
Victoria. The first great event of this reign was the repeal 
of the Corn Laws. In 1838, the Anti-Corn-Law League 
was formed in England, in order to secure the abolition of 
the tariff on wheat, its leaders being two manufacturers, 
Richard Cobden and John Bright, the passionate orator. 
The harvest of 1845 was poor, and the potato crop in Ire- 
land was a failure. Thousands died of starvation and many 
emigrated to America. Relief was imperative; and in 
1846, in order to cheapen the price of wheat. Sir Robert 
Peel, then prime minister, secured the repeal by Parliament 
of the Corn Laws. For this and other reforms, Peel ranks 
among the foremost statesmen of his day, 

England took part in the Crimean War in 1854 in order 
to check the growth of Russia's power involved in her 
plan of a protectorate over the Christians in the Ottoman 
Empire. In 1853, Czar Nicholas I. in conversation with 
the British ambassador said of Turkey: "We have on our 
hands a sick man — a very sick man," and the question of 
the estate of this ''sick man of the East" has caused many 
wars. The battle of Balaklava and the siege of Sebastopol 
(see "Development of Russia") are the most noted events 
of this war. The battle of Balaklava, in 1854, made famous 
by Tennyson, is remembered for the cavalry charge of the 
Light Brigade under Lord Cardigan against the Russian 



39 

artillery; they hewed their way througli the batteries? and 
routed the Russian cavalry, but only one hundred and 
ninety-eight horsemen returned out of six hundred and 
seventy. The medical and hospital service of the Allies was 
shockingly bad. In order to improve the conditions of these 
Crimean camp hospitals, Florence Nightingale labored for 
two years, bringing about many reforms. 

The Indian Mutiny of 1857 soon followed. The English 
East India Company began in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
in 1600, as a simple trading company. Robert Clive, gov- 
ernor of Bengal under the East India Company, was the 
real founder of the British Indian Empire; and by his victory 
at Plassey, near Calcutta, in 1757, over an immense Indian 
army led by Suraja Dowlah, he avenged the tragedy of 
the Black Hole of Calcutta of 1756, and firmly established 
British rule in India. Warren Hastings, governor-general 
of India from 1774 to 1785, was a capable successor of 
Clive, and he with later governor-generals made the British 
East India Company supreme in the entire peninsula. 
The India Act of 1784 required that the governor-general 
and all higher officials of India should be nominated by the 
British ministry, ending the corrupt and despotic adminis- 
tration of the East India Company. In 1857, the Sepoy 
Mutiny broke out near Delhi, and spread through the 
Canges valley. It was caused partly by Indian opposition 
to British social reforms and partly by the fact that a new 
kind of greased cartridge had been introduced into the army 
which had to be bitten before it could be used. As the use 
of cow grease was forbidden by the Hindu religion, the 
native soldiers were furious, and a cavalry regiment, re- 
fusing to use the cartridges, began the revolt. At Cawn- 
pore, in June, 1857, hundreds of Europeans w^ere massacred 
by Nana Sahib. The siege of Lucknow lasted three months. 



40 

a little body of about 1,500 holding out against an Indian 
force of 60,000, until reinforcements drove of! the enemy 
in November, 1857. Delhi was also captured in 1857, and 
the feeble old Mogul emperor was banished to Rangoon. 
To-day the king of England has the title of emperor of 
India. The administration is entrusted to a Secretary of 
State for India, assisted by a council in London; executive 
authority for India is vested in a viceroy, or governor- 
general, appointed by the British ministry. The mumber 
of native states in India now is about seven hundred, 
ranging in size from the state of Hyderabad, with its popu- 
lation of 13,000,000, to states consisting of a few villages; 
these native states are ruled by Indian princes, or councils, 
under British protection and control. Since 1912, Delhi 
has been the capital of India. 

In 186.0, (Gladstone and Disraeli were the two most prom- 
inent figures in English politics. William Ewart Gladstone 
(1809-1898), the son of a wealthy Liverpool merchant, en- 
tered Parliament in 1832, where he remained almost con- 
tinuously till 1895. As Chancellor of the Exchequer he 
won fame as an orator and a financier, working steadily to 
make England a free-trade country. Four times he was 
premier of England— from 1868 to 1874; from 1880 to 
1885; in 1886; and from 1892 to 1894. His most noted 
legislation was his two Home Rule Bills, designed to give 
Ireland an almost independent parliament at Dublin ; these 
two bills were defeated by Parliament in 1886 and 1893. 
Gladstone opposed colonial extension, his party being nick- 
named "Little Englandcrs." One of the great blunders of 
the Gladstone ministry was in allowing France to be crushed 
in 1871 by Germany. 

Gladstone's rival was Benjamin Disraeli, later the Earl 
of Beaconsfield (from 1876). He was of Jewish aneestrv, 



41 

though a member of the'Churcli of Engh\nd. He entered 
Parliament in 1837. Here witli hi^ hair falling in ringlets 
and his bright-colored dress, he excited much derision at 
his first speecli; but he boldly replied to the jeers, "I sliall 
sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear 
me." He continued in Parliament, and made good his 
boast. His famous Reform Bill of 1867 added a million 
new voters, drawn cliiefly from the working class of cities. 
From 1874 to 1880, he was premier; and as such he attended 
the Berlin Congress in 1878, which settled for the time the 
Balkan question. His influence at the Congress was such 
that Bismarck said: "The old Jew — he is the man!" One 
of the chief events of his ministry was his purchase for 
England, in 1875, of the bankrupt Khedive of Egypt's stock 
in the Suez Canal, amounting to four million pounds in 
value. This gave England control of this waterway to 
India. 

Prior to 1870* England had gained little territory in Africa 
except Cape Colony and Natal. Cape Colony was con- 
quered from Holland in 1806, though a compensation of six 
million pounds was paid to Holland in 1814. The abolition 
by England in 1807 of the African slave trade, led to the 
idea of civilizing and converting the negroes there. David 
Livingstone, sent to Africa in 1840 as a missionary,. re- 
mained there till liis death in 1873, exploring the Zambesi 
valley and other southern sections. The work of Henry 
Morton Stanley in the Congo valley from 1871 to 1877, 
and his book. "Through the Dark Continent," gave a new 
impulse to African exploitation. It was not in the Congo, 
but in Egypt, however, that English effort was exerted. 
Tewfik Pasha succeeded to a bankrupt Egypt in 1879, with 
England and France controlling jointly the payment of 
the foreign debt. In 1881. Arabi Pasha led a revolt against 



42 

this supervision, forcing his own appointment as war minis- 
ter. When he began to build batteries in the harbor of 
Alexandria, the British fleet seized the city, in 1882; next 
Arabics forces were defeated by Lord AYolseley at Tel-el- 
Kebir and Arabi was banished to Ceylon. In 1883, Eng- 
land abolished the -joint control, appointing Sir Evelyn 
Baring, later Lord Cromer, as financial adviser. He made 
a new Egypt, remaining there till 1907. In 1914, the khe- 
dive became sultan of Egypt under English protection, and 
independent of Turkey. 

Next followed the war with the Mahdi (/'the guided or 
directed one") in the Sudan. In 1882, he gained control of 
the region, with the exception of Khartum, the capital. In 
1884, General Charles George Gordon was sent by the 
Gladstone ministry to rescue the Khartum garrison. His 
force was too small, however; and after a siege, they were 
overpowered and slain by the ]\Iahdi. The Mahdi's suc- 
cessor was concjuered in 1898 by Sir Herbert Kitchener at 
the battle of Omdurman, two miles from Khartum. The 
transformed Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan were 
thus added to the British Empire. 

The Boers of the Transvaal were the last to yield to 
British control in South Africa. Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) 
wat? for years the leading statesman of South Africa. After 
he had amassed a great fortune in the diamond-fields of 
Kimberley, he entered politics, becoming prime minister of 
Cape Colony in 1890. He aimed at the expansion of the 
British Empire; and in pursuance of this idea he planned 
the great Cape to Cairo Railway in 1893. The discovery 
of gold near Johannesburg, in the Transvaal, caused vast 
numbers to flock there; the Boers fearing the numbers of 
these "Uitlanders," or new-comers, denied them any share 
in the government. The unsuccessful Jameson raid into the 



43 

Transvaal in 1895 was made at the instigation of Cecil 
Rhodes with the hope of beginning a revolt of the "Uit- 
landers." Finally, after further friction with England, the 
Transvaal and Orange Free State declared war in 1899. 
One of the chief events of tlie war was the Boer siege of 
Ladysmith, General White defending the place for one 
hundred and eighteen days until General Buller, in Feb- 
ruary, 1900, succeeded in driving off the Boer forces. An- 
other noted event was the siege of Mafeking, on the 
Transvaal border, when Colonel Baden-Powell i later the 
founder of the Boy Scouts) held out from October L>, 1899, 
until relieved by General Roberts in ]\Iay, 1900. Shortly 
after the capture of Pretoria, the capital, in June. 1900, 
by Lord Roberts, Paul Kruger, the president of the Trans- 
vaal, withdrew to Europe. The final occupation of the 
conquered country was completed by General Kitchener. 
Peace w^as signed in 1902, and the Transvaal and Orange 
Free State became parts of the British Empire. 

Queen Victoria died in 1901, and her son, Edward VIL, 
then sixt\' years old, ascended the throne. This pacific 
monarch aimed to promote the peace of Europe. By his 
efforts, in 1904, the entente cordiale w^as arranged between 
France and England, by which each agreed to support the 
other in African affairs; the later addition of Russia as ally 
of France, made the league a triple entente. In 1908, Her- 
bert Henry Asquith became Prime Minister and David 
Lloyd-George became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Thi- 
rise of Mr. Lloyd-George, born of poor parents in a little 
Welsh village, Avas unprecedented in English politics, where 
rank or college training is almost indispensable for leaders. 

In 1910, George V. succeeded his father. In 1912, As- 
quith took up the question of Irish Home Rule, and a bill 
was passed in 1914, providing for an Irish parliament hi 



44 

Dublin to deal with Irish matters, while the lord lieutenant 
of Ireland, appointed by the British government, was to 
govern Ireland through ministers responsible to this Irish 
parliament. The religious question prevented Irish agree- 
ment. Seventy per cent, of the population of Ireland are 
Roman Catholics. The small percentage of Protestants live 
chiefly in northeastern Ireland, in the province of Ulster 
with its flourishing city of Belfast; and these, under the 
leadership of Sir Edward Carson, began to collect arms in 
order to oppose the introduction of Home Rule, but the 
outbreak of the Great War in 1914 caused a suspension 
of the Home Rule law\ The extreme Irish nationalists 
aimed at making Ireland a republic, and in April, 1916, an 
insurrection broke out in Dublin led by the Sinn Fein (pro- 
nounced shin fane). This name meant "We ourselves," and 
they aimed at separating completely from England. The 
rebellion was suppressed in about a week, after some three 
hundred citizens of Dublin and five hundred British soldiers 
Avere killed. The president of the proposed republic, Padraic 
Pearse, was executed by the British government. In De- 
cember, 1916, on the fall of Asquith, Lloyd-George became 
premier. The Lloyd-George ministry made alternative pro- 
posals for a settlement of the Irish question. It offered to 
bring home rule into immediate effect while excluding from 
its operations the six northern counties of Ulster, or to set 
up a convention of representative Irishmen to try to settle 
the question for themselves. This Irish convention met in 
1917, but after long deliberation they came to no agree- 
ment. Lloyd-George, in November. 1918, declared that 
the first alternative would therefore be used as a basis of 
settlement as soon as conditions in Ireland made it possible, 
and that he would refuse to support any settlement of the 
Irish question w^hich "would impose a forcible coercion of 
Ulster." 



45 

The agitation for woman's suffrage became ])rominent in 
England from 1905. Led by Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst. the 
women resorted to raids and other violent demonstrations 
in protest against being deprived of the vote. The Great 
War showed such patriotic devotion on the part of the 
women of England that a new reform bill was passed in 
1917, enfranchising all English sailors and soldiers, all men 
over twenty-one years of age, and all women over thirty 
years of age. 

Note 1. — The Kiigiisli nation as a whole hated slavcn-y, l>ut the peo- 
ple were divided as to their views during the American (.'ivil War. 
The up})er cdasses favored the South, and the leadeis of the Liberal 
party then in power, Gladstone, Russell, and Palmerston, shaved this 
view, Gladstone going so far as to say in a speech that Jetferson 
Davis **had made an army, had made a navy, and ^^hat is more, had 
made a nation. ' ' The middle and lower classes of England favored 
the North; they maintained their loyalty to the ISTorthern cause even 
when the failure of the cotton supply threw thousands of English 
workmen out of employment and caused wide-s})read suffering. The 
English government remained strictly neutral. The "Trent" Aft"air, 
in November, 1861, with its seizure of Messrs. Mason and Slidell, the 
Confederate commissioners, from on board the British mail stennun- 
* * Trent, ' ' by Captain Wilkes, of the United States ship ' ' San Jacinto, ' ' 
threatened trouble between England and America, but the British 
Government withdrew its demand for an apology and expressed itself 
satisfied witli the release of the two commissioners. British ship- 
builders during the war built five cruisers for the Confederacy, (»f 
which the "Alabama" was the most noted. This difficulty was ad- 
justed b}' the Treaty of Washington in 1871 with the Geneva confer- 
ence in 1872. During the Spanish-American War, English S3anpathy 
for America was strong. Admiral Dewey's victory at Manila in 1898 
was aided by Admiral Sir Edward Chichester, in command of the 
British fleet at Manila, who gave the insolent von Diedrichs, the Ger- 
man admiral there, to understand that he Avould aid Dewey if the 
German ships attacked him. 

Note 2. — Queen A'ictoria (1819-1901) was the only child of the 
Duke of Kent, fourth son of George HI. She was not a woman of 
great intellectual power, nor was she beautiful of face, nor imposing 
in figure, being not quite five feet tall. On her accession, Hanover 
went to her uncde, the Duke of Cumberland, but was annexed by Ger- 
many after the Austro-Prussian War of 1860. She married her 
cousin Albert, prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, in 1840, remaining a 
widow after his death in 1861. She assumed the title of empress of 
India in 1877, and celebrated her jubilee in 1887. She died in 1901, 



46 

after completing the longest reign in English history. Her courage, 
honesty, and love of country were undoubted, but she injured Englan 1 
by her devotion to her German family connections, especially in her 
refusal to assist the Danes in 1866 or France in 1870, against Ger- 
man aggression. 

Note 3. — In 1890, the Marquis of Salisbury (salz'), as English 
prime minister, induced Germany to recognize the British protectorate 
over Zanzibar by giving to her the island of Heligoland, or Helgo- 
land, in the North Sea, forty-five miles from the mouth of the Elbe 
River. This island, strongly fortified by Germany, protected the 
German fleet from attack during the Great War. 

Note 4. — Charles Dickens (1812-1870), the great English novelist, 
published his "Oliver Twist" in 1838 and his "David Copperfield" 
in 1849-1851). William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) issued his 
greatest novel, "Vanitv Fair," in 1847-1848. George Eliot (Mrs. 
Cross, 1819-1880) published "The Mill on the Floss" in 1860 and 
"Romola" in 1862-1863. Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), for many 
years England's leading poet, issued his "In Memoriam" in 1850. 
A few of the other great writers of the period were the historian, 
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859); the poet, Robert Brown- 
ing (1812-1889); the essayist, John Euskin (1819-1900), and the 
historian, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). 

Note 5. — David Lloyd-George was born in a Welsh village in 1863. 
He was raised by his uncle, who was a shoemaker and a lay preacher. 
The family was poor, and the boy had to work for a time in the coal 
mines. Lloyd-George finally took up the study of law; and because 
of his great oratorical powers, he was sent to Parliament, in 1890. 
He opposed the Boer War; and once risked his life to speak on this 
subject at Birmingham, the home of Joseph Chamberlain, "arch apos- 
tle of the Boer War." As Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 
Asquith cabinet in 1908, his budget was called revolutionary, because 
of the heavy income and inheritance taxes that he proposed. He de- 
fended the budget as a war budget for waging implacable war against 
poverty, expressing the hope that some day poverty and wretchedness 
niight disappear from f:ngland. In 1915, he became Minister of 
Munitions, and organized British industries on a war basis. The 
progress of the war failed to satisfy England, and in December, 1916. 
Asquith Avas superseded as Prime Minister by Lloyd-George. By his 
work as Minister of Munitions and as Premier, he was largely instru- 
mental in bringing the war to a successful end in 191S. 

Note 6. — Horatio Herbert Kitchener was born in Ireland in 1850, 
and early entered the British army. He became sirdar (diir'), or 
commander-in-chief of the Anglo-Egyptian army in 1892. His first 
great service to England was his victory over the dervishes of the 
Sudan at the battle of Omdurman, near Khartum, in 1898, by which ho 
established British control in the Sudan. He succeeded Lord Rob- 
erts in command in South Africa in 1900, bringing the Boer War to 
its conclusion. For these services he was made an earl. From 1902 



to 1909, he was commander-in-chief of the Indian army. When the 
Great War broke out in 1914, Kitchener assumed command. He 
predicted that the war woul.l h^st at least three years, and proceeded 
to buiUl up a vast army. The German military staff called these in- 
experienced men ' ' Kitchener 's Mob, ' ' but they became great soldier"^. 
Lord Kitchener met his death at sea, Avhen the British battle cruiser 
"Hampshire," bearing Kitchener on a mission to Russia, was tor- 
pedoed in June, 1916. 



LIBRARY OF 




CONGRESS 



02i--39|f t^^^ ^ 



